>>214226455
>I heard they were supposed to live quickly then die fast but aliens seemed to throw that away.
Yes. In the first movie it was already old when it boards the shuttle with Ripley, you can see that the dome is pitch black. This comes from early designs were the creature was supposedly to be translucent first and then get darker, just like insects irl, but the material didn't worked well, so they went with the dark one.

They even made a figure of that concept, picrel.

Like you said after Aliens everything became a mess and nobody knows anymore, now they have drones, workers, warriors, queens, kings, etc.